Work

Christmas break has officially began for me, and I could not be any happier. I will mostly be working and studying for the NCLEX, but it will be a nice break from what I have been doing this semester. I will also be taking a trip to meet my boyfriend’s family. I should probably be really nervous, but I am actually really excited! I am excited to meet the parents of such a wonderful man, and to see where he is from. I also won’t mind the drive too much because I can just listen to music and such.

Anyways, last night it started getting pretty chilly and things started icing over, and the roads were getting pretty slick. I was glad that Matt got on the road before it got too bad. My parents were on the way to pick up my sister from college and they ended up turning around because they were in stand-still traffic and they had shut down the college town due to all of the ice. There were multiple wrecks and many semi’s were flipped. I am just glad that they were able to turn around and make it home safe.

This morning I was supposed to go to work at the hospital, but the weather had other plans. Both of my parents were scheduled to go to work, as well, but they tried and the roads were too bad. They were going to try again when I went to work and make sure I made it okay. My Dad drives an Expedition and I drive an Explorer so I thought, as long as we went slowly it would not be an issue. Well, our street was a sheet of ice. We made it around the turn out of the subdivision, and my dad made it around the turn towards the light, but I went to make it and fish tailed. I corrected, and then went to continue, but I kept fish tailing and could not get traction. My car began to slide, and I started freaking out and crying because my dad was at the light, and I thought he was going to go leaving me to figure out what to do. He happened to notice I was having a hard time and he back to down to me. I said I am not driving 20 miles to work. My dad ended up getting in my car and taking it back. He was struggling to get it turned around and to make it up the hill back into our subdivision. We were able to skate around with our shoes on so we all decided it was not worth the risk to go to work.

So today has been a great day spent in doors making cookies, spending time together, watching tv, listening to Christmas music, and napping.

The snow is coming down and there is talk that we will get 3-5 inches. Hopefully the roads get taken care of tonight and many people do not have to go out tomorrow.

Wow…it has been a really long time since I have last made a post, and I could say I was just really busy, but that is a terrible excuse. To be honest, I have been busy and in my free time I chose either sleep or hanging out with people who mean the world to me.

Since August, life has been kind of busy, weird, and scary. The reality of graduation has really set in after taking my senior nursing pictures for our composite and sending my requests to do my capstone. I am excited for graduation because I want to have more freedom in my schedule, finally start the next chapter of my life, and travel some more. Before I can do that though, I have to survive the rest of this semester and next, but with the support of my family, friends and boyfriend it should be bearable.

Anyways, in case you are living under a rock, today is Thanksgiving! I am blessed to be able to spend today off with my family just goofing around, watching football, and eating good food. I know it is important to be thankful every day, but it is nice to just have a day dedicated to spending time with family and for our society to take a bit of a breath from everyday life!

To conclude, I hope to be blogging a bit more now that I am back in the grove and will have quite a bit to share with everyone!

….yet, you don’t actually do those things. Everyone swears they will work out now that they don’t have class and have less temptations to order pizza every night since mom is cooking. Sleep…something we college student put on a pedestal, sometimes higher than our grades (sorry mom), yet it’s summer and we end up watching endless amounts of Netflix or going out with people. Which brings me to my fourth point…working and saving…something we swear we will do so we can relax and focus on school {ordering pizza whenever} during the year. While we may work, we certainly aren’t saving because we definitely {don’t} need another romper. And now going back to point number three…going on an adventure. I know this is something that I always swear I will do because I have the time and I will have the money, but I end up working and not having money because I bought that extra romper or ordered pizza again. Yes, I know I made that choice and I only have minor regrets. Anyways, my fifth and final expectation of the summer, get tan. However, you spend most of your day indoors because when it’s so hot out you can fry an egg, you don’t want to fry out there either…or you work…or you are binge watching a Netflix series in the dark.

While we swear we will do a lot of things some times we don’t, but regardless we have three month off of school!

College, the time where we are supposed to figure out what we want to do for the rest of our lives, figure out who we are and possibly who we are going to marry…oh and we should be having the time of our lives. No pressure, right?

As we are going through college doing all of these things we can’t help but to be pulled in all directions{and to our wits end} and to have some challenges in live, and possibly struggle with our relationship with God.

For me personally college has allowed me to meet some wonderful people who are helping me navigate through this crazy thing we call life. This has helped me focus on finding myself {as cliche as that sounds} and helped me decided what I want in life. In college I have learned to say yes to knew things and new opportunities because you don’t know where they will lead. The only problem with this is I start saying yes to everything and before I know it I am supposed to be in two places at once. I think it is important to be involved, and to say yes to new adventures, but finding the balance is something that we {well I} need to really work on. I need to know what I am going to be truly passionate about and put work into and what I should pass on so someone else can express their passion about it.

I think another common trend for not only myself, but college students in general is we get into a routine and get comfortable with it so we don’t explore outside of it much. We forget that exploring in the first place was what helped us find our current place that was better than the last. Also, exploring is what creates those memories that when written down or told are not nearly as meaningful/ memorable as the actual experience.

Something else that I have realized is I want a lot of things and I have not decided if this will help me or hinder me. And when I say I want things I don’t mean just physical things. I want to be successful so I can own a place of my own and be proud of it. Does it have to be a mansion no, but I do want to be a home owner of some sort. I want to be able to have a car that I enjoy driving every day to a career that I hopefully love. I also want to have family and travel to see the beauty that this planet has to offer. While none of these are too out of the ordinary I do know that some people don’t get to experience them because life is expensive. While it can hinder some, I choose to use it as motivation to work hard, and create the life that I want.

Come next May I will be graduating and at that time some decisions will have to be made and certain directions will be followed, but this does not have to be set in stone. I have set myself up to let many directions to be traveled as I see fit. While I may not have figured everything out and I still won’t have some things figured out when college ends, life is young and many things are possible.

North, South, East, and West are all directions, but there are infinitely more and with hard work, a good attitude and faith anything is possible. Keep an open mind and an open heart and good things will come in due time.

Adulting: the act of having to behave like an adult and do adult like things.

This is something that is going to be a very real thing for me in a just a little over the year, but even though I have not graduated college yet I am definitely talking strides to being a fully emerged in the adult world of work, bills, and free-time.

This summer I am keeping myself rather busy with school, an internship and work. My internship involves me being a digital media marketing intern so I will be learning quite a few things. The company I am working for is located down in the heart of KC in the eclectic district called Crossroads. I live about 20 minutes (when you are not traveling during rush hour) from the business and as I am driving to the internship, into the city I feel a little bit of a rush wash over me. I love seeing the tall buildings off in the distance growing closer and I like driving through the city with buildings stretching up high above me. I think one of the reasons I like the city so much is there are always things going on and so many places to go work get work done or to go out and have a good time. I like having options and trying new things so that is just one of the reasons I like the city. Anyways, back to adulating. My first day at my internship was just a couple days ago and I am interested to see how a company (specifically a start-up) company works. In the morning we have a short meeting (called stand-up because we literally all stand around a table to keep it short.) that goes over what is going on in the company and people discuss what they are going to work on for the day. After that people seem to settle into their respective places and develop their flow for the day. Lunch comes and people converse, but then everyone settles back in until the end of the day. I thought I would get really bored quickly, but the time did not drag and I managed to get several of my tasks done or at least a nice head start on them. When it came time to leave I joined a chunk of the city on the commute home. I felt a sense of accomplishment and excitement again because I felt like an adult and I could see myself doing something similar each day.

So moral of the story, I really enjoy working for a business because I like having my own space, a team to work with, a task list, and I like being able to go to out to lunch at different places and dressing up for the work place (oddly enough). I also know that I want to work for a larger company that has room for advancement and involves products or people that I can stand behind and traveling around wouldn’t be such a bad gig. With having little to know experience I know I am going to have to really work to get someone to invest in me so I can invest in their company.

So tomorrow is the first day I am actually working on a floor in the hospital as a clinical associate, and I am terrified. I have been in bed for almost an hour now because I am working my very first twelve hour shift tomorrow and I need my sleep, but I will still probably get my vent iced coffee with skim milk and two pumps of sugar free vanilla (because mind over matter). Twelve hours seems very daunting, but I know I will make it through, I think I am just more afraid of doing something wrong whether that be documentation, taking a blood pressure, or making a patient upset. I know the last one is inevitable at some point because no matter what you do, you cannot please everyone. My mom keeps telling me that I need to relax and that it is my first day so they know you are nervous and may make a mistake. She and anyone else who has told me the same thing are right because they are not going to just turn me loose, that is why they are called orientation shifts. So I will say my prayers that all goes well tomorrow and get some sleep.

Here’s to setting two alarms way before the sun is up and becoming an adult!

I know this seems to be a reoccurring theme, but I apologize for not posting frequently but life sure gets crazy when you are busy procrastinating final and papers, working to try and pay for the IV of coffee you will need to cram for those finals you spent procrastinating. With that though, I have finished my junior year of college and while I was watching this years seniors walk across the stage I couldn’t help wanting to cry, not because they were leaving, but because in exactly one year that would be me. In one year I will be leaving behind the place that in the past three years has become my home where I get to eat lunch with my best friends every day, who I only have to walk about 10 feet down the hall to see the people that matter most, and the place that I can’t actually get work done in the PLC. I know the relationships I have formed in the past couple years won’t fade, but we won’t be as close physically every day so that is what I will miss, but that does mean Sunday Brunches with mimosas and Saturday night stories.

Going into this semester people said it would be the hardest semester yet so I definitely buckled down and prepared for the storm, but honestly it was not as terrible as I thought. I did have to work for my grades, but I still managed to pull off a very solid 4.0 earning my spot back on the Dean’s List. With a successful semester I also got offered to be an RA {Resident’s Assistant} next year in the building where I first lived. In addition to that, I have just started working at a hospital as a clinical associate. I will have a lot on my plate semester with 20 hours and those two commitments, but next year is bound to be a blast regardless.

With this semester over and some fun memories in the book I look forward to having some more adventures this summer with my Little and her boyfriend when I am not at summer school, my marketing internship, or work…summer may not be what it was when I was little {pool days, naps, and too much tv}, but after a long day I am sure down to enjoy a glass a wine now that I am 21.

I pray and hope that I will post more frequently because I am planning to have some good nights.